Page 42 of Cruel Lies

That's not how my father would've played it. Igor would've had Pyotr on his knees by now, so the man knew exactly how high above him he stood.

"Why?" I ask.

Just that.

Without preamble, it pours out of him. He's got a struggling daughter in Brighton Beach, a second grandchild on the way, doctors, so many damn doctors, his heart has been skipping for a year, plus of course there's that dream he's nursed in secret of a small cottage somewhere warm where nobody knows his name or what he's done with his time on this earth. But he's not stealing, he swears it! He swears he's not stealing, he would never, he was just taking enough to ease his way out of the door, because all he wants is out, all he wants is the quiet life, he just wants to die in a comfortable bed instead of a claustrophobic backroom in a warehouse off the BQE.

"I would never talk," he promises as he begins to cry. "You know me, Ronan. You've known me since you were a boy. I'd never breathe a word. I only wanted toleave.I'm too old for this. My heart—" He presses a fist to his chest. "Please. Let me go clean. I'll give you something for it. A marker! Anything. I have a marker—Bocharov, the shipping man in Newark, he owes me, heowes me big and that debt is yours, take it, take it and let me go to my daughter."

A marker.

For some reason, that gives me pause.

I sit with it for a moment.

There's a way this goes that my father would undoubtedly have chosen. I'd give Navi a nod, and by nightfall, a bundled-up tarp would be sunk to the bottom of the East River, and that would be the end of Pyotr Vasiliev. I'd be within my rights as thepakhanof the Akov Bratva to do that. Every new recruit understands when they join: There is no leaving.

I'm not going to do that.

But…

"You'll have your exit," I tell him.

The relief that breaks across his face is so total that it almost embarrasses me. He grabs my hand in both of his shaking ones. "Thank you, thank you,spasibo, Ronan, I?—"

"I'm not finished." I don't pull my hand away, but I don't return the grip, either. "You'll have your life. And I'll take the marker."

"Yes!" he cries. "Yes, of course, it's?—"

"Shut up and listen to me, Pyotr." He clamps up and looks at me with damp eyes and tear-stained cheeks. "The marker is only a symbol of the true collateral here. What binds you to me is in Brighton Beach. Your daughter, the grandchild that's coming, the one already here—they are what's at stake now. Not because I'll touch them—I won't, not unless you make me—but because you'll always know that Icould. For the rest of your quiet littlelife in the sun, you'll know that the door you walked through has me standing on the other side of it. Forever. Do you understand what I'm giving you and what I'm keeping?"

The relief drains out of him by degrees.

It's a devil's deal, what I'm offering. I'll let him out… but if he so much as breathes wrong, it won't be him that pays.

"I understand," he whispers.

"Say that again."

"I understand,pakhan."

What I hate most about this entire thing is that the voice coming out of my mouth isn't mine. It's my father's. The same low menace, the guttural growl, thecoldness,the hatred. I spent my whole childhood watching that man bend the powerless until they broke, throwing glasses at women cowering against kitchen walls.

I swore I'd never be that. That a man needs a code, that there are lines.

Yet here I am. The most powerful man in the room, leaning over the weakest one, deciding how much of his life he's allowed to keep.

"Navi will see you home tonight," I say as I stand and clear my head. "You leave the country within the month. You'll be contacted about Bocharov. You'll never call this number again."

Pyotr nods and nods and nods, an old man's bobblehead nod, and lets Navi's men help him up by the elbows like he's already the sickly, feeble grandfather he wants to be.

I walk out onto the warehouse floor before I have to watch them lead him out.

Navi finds me by the loading bay, staring at nothing, jaw tight.

"That was kinder than your old man would've done," he says, lighting a cigarette he knows I hate. "By a mile."

I shake my head to shut him up. I don't have it in me to hear it. "It wasn't kind."